The problem with children and teenagers today is not what you’d think – it isn’t that they lack discipline or respect or any sense of faith or community.

No, these should be our least important concerns. What looms instead before all of us aged 40 or over is just how smart they’ve become nowadays.

Look, late last week a friend’s daughter was having a 15th birthday party, 18 of her friends turned up, an equal split of sexes, and after a few minutes of pouring cups of fizzy drink, I found myself struck by a terrible realisation – they all carried the air of Oxford graduates.

These are state school pupils, as I was, but unlike me at that age, they were confident, happy and worst of all – intelligent...and not in a bookworm sort of way either.

When I was at school, I was a ‘swot’. No point in being ashamed – I had spots, greasy hair, NHS glasses and a complete lack of hand-to-eye co-ordination (I couldn’t even swim).

Consequently, any valid social life as a 15-year-old was limited to sitting in the school library and staring at Tracy Eastlake, a goddess as far as I was concerned.

At this age, knowledge, general knowledge, revolved around finding the ‘dirty’ passages in James Herbert novels and surviving the girl gang who haunted me every walk home.

Current affairs and the world at large were as alien to me as the thought my mum and dad ever got ‘jiggy’ in order to reproduce. I can’t even say I was ‘happy’. But that doesn’t mean I am blind to the dangers that this current generation of teenagers presents.

Unless we act now, these sharper, more savvy adolescents are going to get Saturday jobs in department stores and supermarkets and imagine – if you dare – the consequences. For instance, just attempting to return a pair of beige, non-iron slacks because their expandable waistband leaves a nasty rash to a sales assistant with a higher IQ than you, could prove too much.

So what can we do to make today’s teenagers more socially backward, less willing to share their educated opinions and less cash rich?

1. Do away with right-on, bleeding-heart parents and instead re-house them with families who simply view them as irritating.

2. Screen non-stop repeats of On The Buses, Please Sir, Terry and June, Man About the House, Bless This House and Up Pompeii.

Personally, I actually believe children feel more secure being stupid. They know their boundaries and need never fear making any kind of social faux pas because they don’t know what ‘faux pas’ means.

If ultimately we want to have a fairer, kinder, more stable society, the last thing we need are children who, upon hitting their teens, become smarter than their parents.